Surprising Ways That Marketing Automation Can Help Your Business Grow

Marketing automation allows a small team to do the work of an entire department.

It improves customer service, saves time and reduces staff error rates. In short, it could enable your company to reach new heights. It certainly helps increase your online leads and push leads through the sales funnel faster.

Have you considered using a marketing and sales automation tool such as HubSpot for your business? Read on to learn more.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing Automation is the software helps you automate repetitive tasks, such as emails, social media and other website actions. The software allows your company to nurture prospective customers with highly personalized, useful content.

Step 2- You follow up with a download link, thank you note and some related articles

Step 3- A few days later, you send a follow-up email offering them a case study related to your ebook topic

Step 4- When that same person downloads the case study, your sales team can reach out knowing that this person is an interested lead

And the best part: It's all automatic! You don't even have to remember to send an email. Plus, it's personalized, so the person receiving your emails is more likely to be interested in the topic.

Far more effective than an email blast, right?

Is marketing automation right for your company?

Every company stands to benefit from automation. It offers greatly improved client tracking, data collection, and analysis which all amounts to improved customer service and conversion rates. However, not every company necessarily needs automation.

So, how do you know if your company really needs automation?

The tell-tale sign is plateauing. Is your company unable to capture new accounts, retain clients or improve your sales? What about staff error rates or campaign rollouts? A plateau isn’t limited to sales; it can be any hurdle your company is struggling to overcome. Automation gives your business the tools to overcome hurdles.

How Marketing Automation Improves Your Business

1. Digital Marketing Can Streamline Client Experience

Clients purchase services from a company that creates an easy and enjoyable customer experience. Ideally, your company should already have a method of tracking client interactions with your business from initial contact to final sale follow-ups and beyond.

Every step is critical. The process is what turns a lead into a customer. It allows your sales teams to up-sell and cross-sell products. It convinces customers that your business is different and encourages them to return or recommend your business.

Automation can assist your company in every one of the steps in your company’s sales process.

For example, a common breakdown in client retention is the failure to follow-up. Automating marketing can track that customer’s experience, what they purchased, if they were satisfied and, armed with that information, you can suggest more products or push them free content as part of an email campaign.

The more your client receives valuable content, the more likely he or she will remember your business. The client experience does not end with a sale -- it never ends. Your company should strive to build an ongoing relationship with your clients. Marketing automation allows you to effectively manage these follow-ups to leverage the existing relationship to sell additional products.

2. Identify Bottlenecks in the Customer Experience

Automatic marketing enables your business to track every step of the client experience from the number of leads, conversions, follow-ups, sales, up and cross sales and retention. Not to mention calculating marketing ROI!

The sheer number of client interactions often overwhelms most teams that lack automated support. Teams can become large and cumbersome, unable to identify bottlenecks. Automation tools can identify where your team is struggling which will allow you to address them.

3. More Data, Better Service

Automation tools can track many different metrics to allow your team to personalize initial offers, email blasts and other points of contact. Your company can run continuous A/B testing to constantly refine the marketing strategies.

Personal information and customized deals add value to the customer experience. Automation tools, in effect, allow your business to maximize the effectiveness of its resources by prioritizing clients and leads most likely to result in a sale.

For instance, if you know prospect A downloaded your product lookbook and then visited a specific product page without inquiring, you could trigger a follow-up email with an offer to trigger outreach or with more information on the product they looked at.

The more refined your data collection and analysis, the more prospects you can identify as a qualified lead.

4. Save time, Improve Efficiency

All of this extra data may seem overwhelming; however, automation tools also help your teams digest the information. Automation allows relatively small teams to run multiple campaigns in volumes similar to a large traditional marketing department.

Employees tend to commit the most errors during monotonous tasks. Automation tools are perfect for these tasks. It ensures that the error rate is effectively reduced to zero while freeing up staff time to focus on creative content.

Automation also allows you to track which campaigns were successful and which were not. With this information, you can begin to repurpose prior campaigns in future content. Why invent the wheel 10 times? You should only do it once, then refine and reuse.

Discover All The Possibilities

Marketing automation offers many benefits for businesses from improved customer service to reduced staffing errors. If your company has plateaued, marketing automation is the stimulus it needs to begin ascending again.